Lessons

Lesson Info

Prepping Tracks and Reamping

Again, getting into a little bit into prepping for prepping tracks and finishing up so that's kind of like where I am on the editing side of things there's not a lot to it. There's ah, again cleaning up the tracks in between cleaning the noise in between tracks I don't do it, you know, but there are times where it can be useful and again, so we went through and we tap through our regions and for me, if it's, if we're in a song and people are saying, like I said, sending me files, I'll make sure that they go through just like this, and I'm consolidating the region's, you know, even if it's using up extra space it's like it's almost like especially if, say, your urine, for example, q base and on and they're sending it to me mixing not impose als it's like, ok, we'll make sure you consolidate zero, right? So and, you know, make everything you know you want to make everything all the same length. A lot of times I do for uniformly say, just so there's no ever mistaking so you take like a re...

gion that's all the way up to the you know, from the zero to the end and then you, you could hit like that you tad down it's the semi colon I don't have the keyboard shortcuts will lay down on me but I know it's semi colon here it's going up and down between the regions and you can hold shift and go through and keep highlighting and go down and that's pretty much all the ones we did today just adding it on and then option shift three still clean and then nice and clean so steve, if you didn't do the cross fades in there and you just consolidated would you hear those pops? Absolutely but if you have to commit to the cross fades right then and there and I also want o point out be very careful with that because some people who don't use suv cross phase on quick punch in pro tools there is is this let me see if I'm remembering right um I don't know where it is on maybe intend it doesn't even matter but there is a I think an hd there is a auto region fayed setting I think ten it doesn't do that anymore because ten doesn't actually right fades until you render it the fades a role virtual in ten but if you're in an earlier version or some other some other programs they still write actual fade files on dh in earlier versions of pro tools they have what's called auto region fade length and that's monitor on lee so even if you don't have quick punch on, it'll put an audio across fade on just on the monitor side so you won't ever hear the pop, but if you consolidate it, you're going to hear the pot you'll never hear that unless you turn that off, so you have to just be aware of the trap and make sure that it's there and you know you could quickly you know, if you're unsure, luckily, right now you have undue, you know, but if you're unsure, uh, you know, once you you consolidate a once and before you throw everything else out, go through and just listen, if you're unsure anything, listen to it and just make sure you then you can always undo and redo your cross fades, but once you're sure and you consolidate everything, then it's you know, for me, it's uh it's a simple matter of a lot of times, like I said, if you want to have that safety net of it back up and I'm really not sure and I always do a safety net, so all consolidate files like this and then before I actually delete them and de bloat the session, I will, because usually you're running a backup on a separate hard drive with some sort of backup program like synchronized pro are any of them trice factor would you back a program to use for a pc now he doesn't do it well normally you're backing out an idea where you're backing up to an external hard drive and using some sort of I do it drop incremental back up where you know like synchronized attacks is one of them where you uh so you run the backup and it'll on ly at it'll only copy over the files to the hard fifty other hard drive the backup drive that you ended that day it's not like you take it and dragged the whole session back over that's your that's redundant so like, you know, some sort of them incremental backup so right here before I throw all my files all maybe leave pro tools run the backup so I have all those other files and those of the region's god forbid something catastrophic was wrong when I need to get back to that you know? But but once that sinks you then it's gone because right now you know it's you said it's you know, because even those the tube when you sink I'm not doing there's one that do sink where it make sure that bolt arrives there your mirror images of each other but I'm doing one where it's it's just incremental it's adding it's all the other files and adding it's not mirroring the first first drive I'm just like what did I record today and go ok and throw them over to the draft so there's one back up that sits there that's got everything since the beginning even from drum tracking multiple drum takes and everything like that so it's just this big giant thing can be like hundreds of gigabytes but it's a ultimate I can't state this enough in computer thing of save save save obviously auto say and back up you can never have enough backups so sometimes do backups and backups you know, maybe I'm being paranoid but I will always make sure that I always have one fail safe that scott pretty much everything we recorded every bad note every wrong take it's all there in case you ever need to dig it out and then you save like I said, you do multiple versions so I lost my bet c l phase and then I'll do save copy as the next section the next we're not safe copy with save as and I will do you know zero point one so that's the next thing that's the next step and in zero point one so not to your poem on zero the fades session that went to the backup that's there with all the extra regions now hit the unused regions uh command shift you and then command shifty and like I said normally before we have the making sure we have a backup you know, uh then I'll hit delete for this say chris, we don't have a backup, I'm just gonna hit removed normally I will hit the league and I'll commit because I know I'm backed up just like get these files out here, I don't want them, you know, because it's just just bloats the session and slows everything down and the fragments, the discord and you don't want that stuff, you know, so onto revamping um, not my normal thing because, like I said, based on everything ive show you over the past couple of days um it's all about committing and working with the player and adjusting the sound to the player and as he's playing in the track that's obviously the ultimate goal because everything affects everything was we saw and it's all kind of symbiotic out of the player response to what's in here and how the ampersand finding how the players, you know, so all that so revamping doesn't, doesn't it takes that that element, the element of any reacting and me adjusting and that philosophy it takes a layer of that off, so I don't usually like to do it, and plus I feel like it never sounds quite maybe because of that layer, it never sounds quite as good it's, not normal process but it can work in a pinch, for example, we've had scenarios where a piece of gear we really want to use, particularly like a base head or something way didn't have access to it access to the day that we want to start tracking base, so we got a good base tone up and something that was reactive and that maybe we'd even blind in her years a good director, sands anderson like that on then later, when we got that piece of gear and we have access to were able to then incorporate that into the mix as well. So there are obviously circumstances where it works well, it can work in a pinch and especially and I touched on this yesterday if you're in a double track and set up where we're crunched for time and he's flying back to new jersey in three days and he's got all these little extra guitar parts going, but we're really in a great flow with vocals, and I really can't, you know, I really can't we can't break for, you know, for greg, because if we if we take it, you know, we stopped recording with him, his voice is going toe is going to cool down it's not gonna be the same, and we need to really focus on the vocal of that point so well, hazel extra part typically print my tones anyway right but for some people who don't have the right gear don't feel confident in cells definitely right but a double tracking set up we'll allow you allow us to aiken make stems of what I'm doing here I can give them to bend bounce them to zero just like the same thing because that way the time reference is always the same even though the the well we talked about about the between two sessions like you based on pro tools they don't line up like you know a lot of times they they're they're weird and they don't really translate the same it was always you consolidate and mt zero they're always going to be the same so I can give him stems like of the drums and like base or whatever and he can then just take a die with interface and track a bunch of stuff and then if I want to well the d I signal like you heard originally like you heard before like you could be uh pull it up really quick and to show it again yeah that you well you tracked it right? Yeah well right but that's the one with that also has like the distortion rolling on it but I could show you can't part of god part you know, where is thea so like say like that this one obviously is that we did this specifically for sound for for texture and I actually made it very bright but so you could take a deed to take a direct sound and record just you're basically just reporting that ines approach als or whatever and then after that you can show uh sit the signal change really quick because switch over so after we get that die signaling it's going through the computer and then there's companies out there like radio that and little abs that make a actual specific box for revamping in the in the case that we have we didn't have that so we're using the reverse die and I'll show that in a second and literally you're you're feeding it out of the fader you're making a a chain to send it out to that you're sending it out to the re inbox and then literally it's that becomes just like the guitar players here and that signal gets fed through the m and through our my chain and you know if you wanted to pedals and all that it's the same thing you know it's basically just without the player here just getting the signal coming off his guitar same thing back through the whole our whole chain of the mixer and sub mixer and q and compression back into the computer um so let's see you know what yeah we're going to run it through but I'm going to just show you really quick um what I did here let's see so we have our d I track okay? So in pro tools in the aisle set up okay? I created an output but let's just let's just delete that and start over second. Uh yes ok ok, so in pro tools in the aisle set up in the outputs now this is the quartet and this has eight outputs available to you we're going to create a new path great one mano path and in this case already have our change set up and it's coming on output six so I'll put six and we're going to call this a revamp and then just make sure and hear bus should show up right here ramp inside the bus section of the I o make sure this is here and it's going to revamp same thing it should automatically when you create the output in pro tools it will it should created here sometimes if there's an existing io set up like like I had to hear from my old tracking set up in my studio um sometimes it'll double it will make a double output and you want to make sure that doesn't happen it'll it'll tell you once you get okay it would be like there's another thing another apple call reon please eliminate one so just bear that in mind that sometimes that does happen so and it's literally a simple as that you said having output a bus to go to the physical hardware output called ramp and then you take this guitar for instance, ok? So that's here now and now your output here and there it is right there ramp okay, so now it's not playing back in the session it's going out not through the speakers but it's going out through our output number six and like I said, normally we have ah uh I have a reem box in my studio and I haven't patched in at all times that I've ever wantto remember anything I could just automatically send it to that. So if you don't have a re inbox the easiest way to do this it's important I stayed a d I but it's important that I stayed to use a passive d I and not an active d I to do this so you take a passive d I and a d I ironically enough even though there's there's a pass through here but it basically it would work once you're reversing the signal it passes through both ways just as if you're going through the guitar into the d I like we showed over there with countryman and then through the amp flowing out through pro tools and normally this is the output but we have a just a simple cannon jack a reverse sir female the female and turning it around cause the outputs of pro tools well this one actually is a balanced quarter inch output but normally it's you need it you need to turn around to do this where you khun like I said if you're so inclined you don't need to buy this you could buy you could actually just rewire and buy a jacket a a elektronik supply store and rewire my cable with both of these ends on it so double female so you get to turn around here go into the output which is actually now our input and then we're going to get a guitar cable can you give me victor cable of the fifty one fifty if you just give me the one from the fender this is still on literally going through our output on these air parallel so it doesn't really matter in or out it's simple as that and then there's there's ground lift as well if you're getting a buzz so sometimes you you little home and you can see it shows the ground buzz or not yeah see that's normally so ground left quiet right down and there's our part there's our part instead of it being this now we brought it back to the rio just like just like anything and then let's make it let's make a new track I don't know how much latent see we're gonna get with this but we'll find out and quick second let's call this stab ramp again going through our normal signal chain just like everything e now it's important to know that obviously this and this can actually be a valuable one thing that your level here is affecting the drive going to the answer if you want to drive the in party you could just push the fader up and this can actually be a very interesting thing because you could if you wanted to do some interesting textures or interesting little tricks with the guitar sound you could if so inclined you could actually if you want to edit say volume automation well, the volume on emissions here is from the original mix but um so you wanted tio just like the thing I was showing with the d I that we're gradually increasing and distortion as we were going and this is a different section but what if you wanted to do that and you could actually kind of do something like this and as the park rose you're automatically kind of building and creating tension that way so that's an interesting little trick you could do with revamping and just automation if you wanted to maybe and make certain things jumped out but then again it goes to back to working within the track so what's it like what's it sound like in the track this thing it's so loud you realize it's crazy um ok so let's since again, we don't have the luxury of having it just monitor on input. So again, you're listening to the track and trying to get it to react. So what? It should feel like in the track again, because people send me re again. One of those things were when the audience submitted tracks. We had to make sure that it was like, don't just send me a d. I send me a die and then sent me a stereo mix because otherwise, like, what am I doing?